05 - All Things Money and our Childhood Beliefs with Suzy Alcantara

Dawn Taylor invites guest Suzy Alcantara, Registered Massage Therapist and owner of Reveal Wellness Studio, to the show to talk all about money. They discuss earning, blocks in how we view money, how we are formed by what we grew up with, how we work, and musings on the concept of retirement.

Suzy shares how both of her parents worked full time when she was growing up and how the larger family who lived together - parents, her sister, her mother’s youngest brother and sister, and her grandfather - all worked, with the exception of her grandfather. She says that work ethic defining your value was innately ingrained at a young age, and money to support family became pivotal in her mind.

Dawn and Suzy dissect how most of us have created our views on money based on how our parents and grandparents viewed money, the things they said about it, and how they dealt with budgets (or didn’t). Dawn and Suzy address the silence surrounding money, the reticence of parents to reveal exactly what household finances look like to their children. And they discuss why retirement is a scary prospect and where the concepts of 65 being the age of retirement and the necessity of a retirement plan actually come from.

About Suzy Alcantara:

Suzy Alcantara is a Registered Massage Therapist who is passionate about your healing journey and being your guide to your own personal transformation. Suzy has 17 years of experience as an RMT integrating various holistic modalities into her treatments. She loves integrating both western and eastern philosophies of medicine and overall body function. With her knowledge and experience she works intuitively to select modalities that work best for you and your nervous system.Aside from guiding her clients to the best version of themselves, Suzy also is inspired by facilitating the growth of amateur massage therapists by mentoring and empowering them to flourish at their best so they can create a positive impact in the world. Building conscious connections and creating community through her studio by hosting healing circles and Subconscious Imprinting Technique group healings lights up her soul.

Suzy is a heart centered entrepreneur and owner of Reveal Wellness Studio. Her core values of support and leadership continue to thrive and flourish to build deep and meaningful relationships within the community.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind” by T. Harv Eker
• Book with Suzy at Reveal Wellness Studio
• Mikado Restaurant - Edmonton, AB

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Dawn Taylor - The Taylor Way: website | facebook | instagram | linkedin

Suzy Alcantara - Registered Massage Therapist / Owner at Reveal Wellness Studio: website | instagram

Transcript:

Dawn Taylor  00:09

Hey, hey, welcome to another episode of The Taylor Talks. I'm your host, Dawn Taylor, and I am so excited to be here today, with the most amazing Suzy. She is the greatest massage therapist I have ever experienced in my entire life, and a mom and a business owner and a wife and all of the things. She's just an activist and a fighter for life. And she inspires me all the time. And in one of my massages, we realized that we have really intensely cool conversations that most people don't have. And we kept joking about it that we should just be recording my massage every time. And that that will make a podcast episode. But today, we are going to actually record one of them. She is here right now with me. So stick around, we're gonna also do a really cool giveaway at the end of it. There's gonna be some links for some books, some different things we're going to recommend. And I hope you really enjoy our conversation today on money and the power that it holds and shouldn't.

Dawn Taylor  01:14

Suzy! We did it, we finally made it, we're here. We're gonna record this crazy podcast.

Suzy Alcantara  01:22

Oh, my goodness.

Dawn Taylor  01:23

I am so glad you're here. Welcome.

Suzy Alcantara  01:27

Thank you. Thank you so much for that lovely, lovely introduction. I gotta say, yes. Like our appointments together just get so much inspiration and just really nitty gritty topics. And, you know, talking about this whole concept about money and money blocks, especially as business owners, I always find that sometimes it is, like, such a rocky foundation that no matter what is happening within your business, it seems to always come down to money. Like, why? I want to know why. Right? So we can dive into like our own money patterns. And the language that we give and the energy that we put around money. And as far as we want to, like, reap in all the rewards and all the abundance of life, somehow, for some reason, I guess in my mind, it always equates to not having enough.

Dawn Taylor  02:24

K. So this was this conversation we were having, right, was this fact that like, why is there never enough? Why do we get blocked? Why is it that we have these like limits on it? And it's cool, because guess what? No one talks money. Nobody talks about money. I have spent so many years frustrated because we hear what our parents said, right? We hear how they talked about money. And like you come from a Filipino culture, I come from like a Mennonite German culture, both of those it all equates to hard work.

Suzy Alcantara  03:00

Yeah. 100%. Hard work equals success, right?

Dawn Taylor  03:04

Oh, hard work is your worth, like your actions equal your worth, right? But I don't know about you, but like, my parents, my parents were amazing and horrible with money. And here's what I mean by that: my parents very openly talked about, like, how they gave 10% of their money away every single month, no matter what, even if they were scrambling and could hardly feed us. They always always always gave to charities, like that was huge for them. They were very, very giving in that way. They never took more than 10 years to pay off a house. So we got to be part of celebrations of them paying off houses growing up, or we'd go for like a fancy dinner and things like that, to celebrate the fact that there was no longer a mortgage payment, which I'm very aware of in the year 2022 that is not quite as feasible to do. But they always lived really well below their means so that they could do that. And my mom never worked. Like for a lot of my childhood my mom never worked. And she took care of things. But they also didn't talk budgeting. They didn't talk retirement. They didn't talk... like what people made an hour, how people function, how you set yourself up for success. They never talked about those things. There was like so much shame and, like, secrets around it. What about yours? What was your childhood like?

Suzy Alcantara  04:29

You know what, both my parents worked full time. My mom was a licensed practical nurse when she had immigrated from the Philippines and my dad, he graduated to be an optometrist in the Philippines and then immigrating - at separate times from my mom, so they met each other in Canada - couldn't practice, like he'd have to go back to school to practice as an optometrist in Canada. So he ended up working for like a large optometric or whatever that word is. Optometrist kind of like dispensary, like, that makes glasses and lenses and basically like, puts the glasses together, put the grade into lenses and what-not, makes glasses, right? So, and we lived the extended family household. So not only was it me and my mom, and my dad and my sister, my mom's youngest brother, youngest sister, and her dad also lived with us as well, everyone worked except for grandpa. So there was constantly this kind of, like, everyone, everyone had to work. But there was someone that was always home. But working was the foundation of, I want to say how our family functioned. Right, like, it's the way that our family flowed to do things. And from that, it was like very much the concept of I have to work because I have to make the money. And it was like, I have to work to make the money to support family. So if I'm taking that concept, like, into my family setting now, I can see how very much, like, deeply ingrained it is that it's if I don't work, how am I supporting my family? Even though I know there are so many ways to be a supportive mum, and, you know, womanly figure in the household without having to bring in the money, like just to even just nurture, right? But I can see how that pattern has already kind of like leaked into my family. And now as a business owner, and this is one of the things about being a business owner, too, it's like I have this concept and this idea of what a business owner is like. And I always saw freedom in that. But in actually living that, there is freedom and liberation in it. But it's this constant learning and growing. And then, yeah, it's what what are my thresholds with money? So?

Dawn Taylor  07:06

No, and I totally, I totally get it. So you were asking me prior to us hopping on the podcast, how I started breaking through that, to get out of that, you know, the ebb and flow and the money, the money hostage, if you want to call it that?

Suzy Alcantara  07:26

I'll put it in a concept of like a container. So let's say you do have this kind of belief system that if you make this much money, you'll be okay. Right? Let's say you get that corporate job and you're making, I don't know, what's a good amount of money these days to make?

Dawn Taylor  07:42

I don't know, $100,000.

Suzy Alcantara  07:44

$100,000, that's your container, that's your safety net, you'll feel safe in doing that. However, knowing that us as humans are always longing for some sort of like expansion, you begin to feel the threshold of that container of $100,000. And all of a sudden, you kind of just break your price point and just try and even make that a couple $1,000 more. But once you kind of go over that edge, there's this kind of, like, bounce back between, yes, you can have that $1,000 but we're going to send you $1,000 bill to pay. Where it's like how do you make that border expand to then encompass what you want to call in. Without it being so much of what comes in also comes out? Or maybe it's the concept of being safe or feeling okay with just having money in the first place?

Dawn Taylor  08:40

Well, isn't that part of it, though? So I've been reading this really interesting book, and listening to it on audiobook because that's how my brain works, and it's called “Secrets of a Millionaire Mind” by T. Harv Eker. And someone has said, someone who I follow on Instagram who I have mad respect for, I mean, they don't know who I am, but someone had questioned her on one of those, like, ask me anything things, if there was any book you would recommend around finances, and getting ahead, what book would it be? And she's like, 100% this one. So I read it. And I'm almost done the book, but it's really interesting, because he goes through - and we'll have a link to it in the show notes, so you don't have to, like, stop what you're doing and write that down if people don't want to - but he goes into like the different areas of our life and how we have what we've heard, right, what we've been told about money? So the words that were spoken, like no, that's too expensive, or no, we can't afford that or wealthy people are all greedy, or, you know, money doesn't grow on trees, like all these statements and these words that we've heard our entire lives around money. But then there's the actions we saw. Right? So how did money go? And he talks about a story of how, like, I think it was his dad was a land developer, he would buy and he talks about how like his dad would buy that plot of land. And then everything was stressed, like money was all stressful. It was all angry, all stressful because he had bought this piece of land, and it was like, there's no money for anything, and he couldn't buy anything for anyone. But then all of a sudden, give it however many, you know, months/years later, he sells the land. Now he's flush with cash. And now he's like Mr. Generosity himself, right? And so how watching those patterns, we grow up thinking almost in that same way. And so as I've been unpacking this in my own life, right, and looking at the things that was said, is there's always been this pride to be poor in my family. Where it's like, not even that anyone is poor. Like they all make good money, but I remember the first time seeing - and I apologize if family's listening to this, and they're like, what? sorry, guys, but this is my perspective on this - but I remember the first time one of my aunts was wearing a pair of jeans that I had worn when I was 12. And I was in my, like, 30s. And she's like, do you remember buying these? Don't you wish you had kept them? And I was like, should you be proud that you're wearing like 25 years old pants? Right? Like, in my head, that was a really weird thing. Right? And the hoarding tendencies and they keep everything because everything has a value, and I spent money on that. And right, like, you can't get rid of anything. And it created in me this weird belief around money and almost like a desperation, like money has to feel desperate, right? And it has to feel hard. Like it can't easily flow, right? Money is the root of all evil. Pride goeth before the fall. Like these are the words that would flow through my brain. Well, then subconsciously, how do you... how do you break those rules that we have on money and what we're allowed to have and how much we can make and what retirement looks like, and when we retire and healthy amounts of income, when that's our belief in the background, right? Is that money is the root of all evil? Well, of course, we don't want to keep it because we don't want to be evil. Do you know what I mean? And, like, this is how our brains get wired. This is how our brains function. And then we wonder why we do this. And so, you know how you've heard over the years about, like, lottery winners, like they've only ever lived on 65,000 a year, and then they'll win like $50 million. Give them five years and they're back to $65,000 a year. Right? It's because of, like, what their money story is, it's because of what they believe they're allowed to have, what they believe they're allowed to make, their beliefs on what money even looks like. And so, I don't know, I keep having these conversations with people and doing this work on myself. Because I'm like, I don't want money to feel hard. I don't want it to feel desperate. I was talking to someone a few months ago, a client and she was having like, almost full blown panic attacks on like, I'm never gonna be able to retire. And she's, I think she's about 45, 45/47, and I said, 'Oh', and she goes, 'I need like $5 million to retire'. And I said, 'Where did you get the number from?' 'Well, that's just what my parents always said'. That was the number her parents said, and she's like, 'I do not know how I'll ever make $5 million to put in retirement'. And I phoned one of my friends who sells life insurance and does retirement plans and savings plans and stuff, and I said, 'Hey, what do you actually need to retire?' He was like, what? And I said, 'How much do you actually need?' So again, like we're talking in Canada, but he's like, if you have $800,000 in your retirement plan, you can have, like, seven I think it was like $7,000 a month for 35 years.

Suzy Alcantara  09:26

Wow.

Dawn Taylor  11:19

Right? And I was like, Huh, well, that's way more feasible. Which all of a sudden, like, if you break that down over an extended period of time, like, that becomes a way more feasible item to come up with and a number to create or to get, when you stop and think about it, right? Like your face when I said that, you were like, oh, that's not as bad as I thought.

Suzy Alcantara  14:24

I'm like, I didn't calculate.

Dawn Taylor  14:27

Like it's his job, right, but he was doing a plan for a client, but like, he had said that and I went, oh. And he goes, why? And I said, that's just so, like, why does noone talk about this? Why don't people talk about money or retirement or savings or any of these things?

Suzy Alcantara  14:44

I think there's a lot of fear wrapped around it as well. Right? For a personal concept in my mind, I don't have the concept of retirement. Like there's always going to be a passion and purpose in my heart that wants to be fulfilled and I hope that kind of just keeps on going, you know? And with that, I'm hoping there will be money that continues to come to me if I'm living in my purpose and being aligned with what I want to put out there into the universe. So, like we always say, money is energy. And that's where my mindset is at. But, you know, people do ask me like, do you plan on retiring? And it seems like such an old concept of, you know, having to save money and put money aside, but there's something within me that just doesn't align with that. And I'm just like, I want to keep on doing what I'm doing, maybe scaling back on the massage part, but continuing to kind of support whoever I want to, or whoever comes my way, through the means of what I develop in my business. Right? So yeah, it's such an interesting concept of even just like systems, like the systems that we have around money, like I question, is it even working for our demographic, you know, like being in our 40s? It's, like, the concept of equity, like home equity, and retirement, and saving for that? I don't know, like, that itself causes stress within me. So I'm like, I don't even want to think about it. Right?

Dawn Taylor  16:22

Okay, but here's where I would challenge you even on that one statement you made about retirement and not even going there. I used to think the same until I sat with it and was like, 'What am I scared of?' Like, what are my fears attached to this concept of retirement? Will I work till I'm 90? Yeah, probably. Like, my husband laughs all the time. He's like, I want to be retired by 55, and then you will work for another 40 years. Because you love what you do. And I was like, 'Oh, 100%'. Like, I will work until they like wheel me into a senior's home and I can't have enough visitors to coach, kind of idea, right? Like, I always joke about that. I have to, I was joking with one of my IV doctor, I was like, can we be in the same senior's home, because I'll probably still be getting IVs to keep up my health at that point to maintain my career. And he's like, can you imagine if we were all of the same seniors home, just, like, keeping each other going, right? We joke about it. But when it comes down to it, that's where like, the logical side of my brain always has to still step in and be, like, I can dream and I can put it out there. And I can think about it. I can, you know, whatever I want about what that could look like for retirement. But at the end of the day, what if something happens? What if I get sick? What if like, I still have to pay my bills, and I can't be a burden to the people around me, as much as I do have some nieces and nephews that I'm like, 'Oh, get ready, Aunty Dawn's coming for you'. When I get old, you're taking care of me because I don't have kids. And I mean, but in all seriousness, it's still that responsibility aspect, without it feeling like a burden. And I think that that's where it - and for people listening, like, please comment, like in the shownotes go comment, tell us how your thoughts are on this, and how you feel about it, and how you deal with it or if you have a big plan on it. I feel like we still have to be realistic, to have a retirement plan, and to know that we can take care of ourselves when we're old, like, it's our responsibility to take care of ourselves when we're old. Right? And to be able to pay our bills. But, like you, it becomes this like scary thing where it's like, I'm just gonna avoid. And then I'm gonna go super woo-woo on this and I'm gonna just manifest till I'm 100. Like, it'll work. I'm sure it'll work. And I think that it's a beautiful, easy way out, in a way. And at the same time, there's totally some truth and validity to it. It's also looking at it and going okay, what about this scares me? Or is it something where I can love myself and honor myself and respect myself enough to prepare for this? Right? To go there, to do that?

Suzy Alcantara  19:20

Yeah. 100%

Dawn Taylor  19:22

You're like, dammit.

Suzy Alcantara  19:23

I know. But there's so many ways to do it. Like is a retirement plan, does that mean like talking to a guy that just knows financial planning, or can have retirement plan be also investments in properties that make it really well, you know?

Dawn Taylor  19:44

I think it could be a combo, right, and that's where if you find the right person to work with you, for myself, like we've always had crazy sporadic income, we've always... it's the Irish joke that in how in was raised, when you're raised by farmers, or people that come from that demographic and generation, there's like a feast or famine. It's like crops are off the fields. We sold them yay, an abundance of money. Oh, we took all the cows to the market, right? Yay. An abundance of money, whatever it is. That passes down generation to generation of that mindset. So even, like, in my childhood, it was always like my dad's either working all the time, or it's break and he's home.

Suzy Alcantara  20:29

Yeah. And even in that time, too, it's like that feast or famine, it's kind of like, what do I need to let go of in order to make money? So if we take a look at that container, again, where it has that boundary of like, this is how much you want to make, but you want to make more, but there's this kind of, like, whenever I bring something in something also has to come out, feast or famine idea, still with that concept.

Dawn Taylor  20:56

But that's where, like, if you think about it, isn't that just the story we've created in our head from how we were raised?

Suzy Alcantara  21:02

Yeah, it's generational.

Dawn Taylor  21:05

Isn't it? And it's generational, like you and I've talked so much about this in terms of, like, watching our parents, and how they interacted with each other. And now we're doing the same with our spouses, because it's these trained behaviors. So when we sit down and look at it, where's the belief coming from? Where did the belief start that in order for you to go, like that you can't go above a certain number? Right? Where did the belief start? Where did that belief come from? It's like the bad things happen in threes. Like, what was spoken over us that these internal stories happened that made us believe that this is how life has to be?

Suzy Alcantara  21:46

Yeah, there's so much depth into that.

Dawn Taylor  21:50

But, like, even retirement itself. Okay, retirement as a concept. Retirement came from Germany in the war, when they were bringing up younger soldiers, and they needed to retire, quote/unquote, the old boys to make room for the new ones, because they weren't good anymore. But life expectancy was 67 so they retired them at 65 so that they could have a few years out of the war, and then they would just die. That's literally where it came from. It got brought to North America as this like weird number of 65. That's when we retire. That's as long as we work. Where when you dig into it, there's whole countries and cultures that don't have a concept of retirement. Like people are still working at 100/110. Like, literally, in villages, there's no retirement, like jobs might shift or change or whatever, but it's not even a concept. So then as a society, and this has always driven me crazy, is we're expected really, if you think about it, you graduate at 18, you might have your shit together, if you're lucky, by the time you're like 30, making a decent income, like your quote/unquote, adult income, right? Because then you're having kids, and you're buying houses and cars and doing all the things. So even if you were to start at 30, and put a ton of money aside every month, you have 35 years to save all the money you need for what the next 35 years. That's weird. But then you have like life circumstances and things that happen where you can't put that amount of money away, and it doesn't matter. It's, I'm not saying like, oh, well, if you just stop, right, the whole thing of like, just stop buying avocado toast and Starbucks and you could retire 10 years earlier. No, sometimes there's health issues, or there's massive traumas, or there's just situations that happen that make it so we don't, or we weren't taught, it's not a pattern. It's not a behavior, we have fears, whatever it is. But like this idea, and then I don't know about you, but I remember talking to a friend probably like six, seven years ago, and she was like, I'm way too close to 50, we have nothing in retirement. She's like, I don't know how we're going to cope. And so she was just shutting down. And I was like, okay, but at 40, like, and so I remember saying to her at that point, I was like 'So, but why do you have to hold to the 65 number?' What if you actually worked till 75? What if your magical number was like 81? Like 81 years old is the year I retire? Because like that's part of it, too, is we have all this like weird ass shame from society of like, no, but you have to be retired for 65.

Suzy Alcantara  24:42

And like, you can't work beyond 65.

Dawn Taylor  24:45

Right? And then you're like, old? It's like, wow, you're really old. I'm sorry. I have hung out this year with enough 70 year olds that have more energy than I do, that I'm like, I can't imagine not working at that age and having that much energy. Like they're so young in my brain now, when I see them and hang out with them, but I don't know, it's just a weird, it's a weird thing that no one talks about.

Suzy Alcantara  25:12

It is, it is. It's really, like you can just tell with like the expression on my face. Like there's so many things that are just happening in my head right now. Like, what about if and how? It's like scenarios, right? Yeah.

Dawn Taylor  25:28

Totally. And I know for us, like, one of the things that we started was just a little bit into an RRSP. Just a little bit. We started that years ago, just to be like, okay, we'll just start somewhere. But I'm also new. And I've talked about this having come from the background I come from in terms of like, health issues, not expecting to live past the age of 40. Like, all of these big things, in my brain I didn't think I'd still be alive. So, like, my husband and I have been having the conversation of like, yes, we have to pay off debt. And we're actively working on it. Yes, we need to save for retirement, and we're actively working on it. But we also kind of want to live semi retired until we die. Right? And for me, semi retired is still doing the things. It's still taking that vacation, it's still going to the random concerts, it's still taking chunks of time off, it's doing those things, but I refuse to almost like, die now to live later.

Suzy Alcantara  26:33

Yeah, exactly.

Dawn Taylor  26:35

But there has to be a happy medium.

Suzy Alcantara  26:39

Die doing all the things so then you can enjoy your life later? Yeah.

Dawn Taylor  26:43

When 50% of people died two years after retirement?

Suzy Alcantara  26:47

100%. That's when majority of the illnesses come in. Lose that purpose of not working.

Dawn Taylor  26:56

100% they do. So I think that's, like, part of my thing is I'm like if I just live semi retired, don't ever retire, that I could just live indefinitely. This is my brain lunch.

Suzy Alcantara  27:10

That's so true. I like that. I can agree with that.

Dawn Taylor  27:20

So what do you wish? So let's go into a different side of this. What do you wish your parents had talked to you about around this growing up?

Suzy Alcantara  27:29

Gosh, how to work with it, you know, and maybe pull back a little bit less, unlike that hustle type energy of having to catch up all the time. Catching up was never a concept that was verbally spoken, it was more of like the child that I was being able, like observing the fact that my parents worked full time jobs, they come home, I need to make sure that there's rice cooked, and had the table cleaned up so we can have a quick dinner. And then we would go to their part time jobs. And then I would go with them. So then I can just hang out with them. And that was my quality time that I had with my parents. And so even though we did it that way, what I saw was that we were able to, you know, my parents built a house in the north side of Edmonton in the 90s, which I knew was completely out of their price range. But because we had other family moving to the north side of Edmonton, they wanted to move along with them and create like a community and a new community. They bought a vehicle with a really pretty sweet downpayment. So their monthly payment wouldn't be so hefty on them. And then they had me and my sister through post secondary, and we're able to pay off their mortgage really fast. So it's like the concept of, you know, just even being able to observe of like, that's how much they put in. And this is, now they're like reaping the rewards of their lifestyle. So when it comes to the house that they have, and the concept that I have is like why don't you just downsize? There's so much pride in everything that they put into it because of working for it, that the attachment to it is so strong, they can't see life any other way. They just think that this is the way life is. Where, like I am noticing within myself that it's not what I agree with, like there's always going to be ebb and flow with what I believe lifestyle should be. And so I love being a renter. I don't want to own a home. I've done that three times. And I like having the flexibility and finding homes that then suit the needs of my family in that time. And even with that just trying to understand the concept of like home equity and is it a value that I carry? That's something that I want to live out and see, just with my husband and I coming to terms that it doesn't really match our values. Yeah. It's a really different concept of living. Like we, my husband and I, we do, we are pretty career driven. And so when it comes to where we were prior to having kids, our lives did revolve around work, and really finding that fit with companies that would jive with our lifestyle. And then once we had kids and got married, and things like that, we really started to, you know, put those family values of what we've seen with our families with buying a house throughout the years it just was a struggle for us. Even though we had that foundation of having that, like, post secondary job that was like meant to support us. So yeah, just even having the conversation with him, just like what what are our values with money? Like, how do we want to continue living this lifestyle, and since we are both career driven, and we have kids, now, the concept of like, keeping the house tidy, is just not where we want to spend our energy. So the concept of just having someone to support us by cleaning our home for us, and we support them, by paying them for that service is so much more of a higher value for us to keep on living the lifestyle that we want to to have the time with our kids, and the time, the quality time, with each other. Whereas that would be highly judged as only what rich people do within the Filipino community. Yeah, it's really interesting to kind of, like, take that different, I guess, like where your values are as far as like how you want to run a household, and then also kind of like, feel or lean into the judgment of, if I do this, then what will people say? Even though I know it doesn't matter? But it's there. I know it brews, you know.

Dawn Taylor  27:52

100%.

Suzy Alcantara  30:11

Yeah, and it works for us. Right? So it's very different, like I think, you know, coming from a family that was very into, like, hard work equals success. Like, there are bits and pieces of that, that we do take into our life. But we also take other bits and pieces that we never had growing up, and we've like, implemented that to just make it a little bit more expansive and flowy, I guess.

Dawn Taylor  32:50

Well, and I think that's, like when I look back at my childhood, logically - and I know I've had these conversations with some of my older nieces and nephews - it's like, let's talk what things actually cost. Like, I wish my parents would have sat us down and gone over the monthly budget like, this is what's coming in, this is what's going out, this is what things actually cost, right? This is how much we make. This is, if we want to do this activity, or we want to buy a boat, or we want to go to Disney or we want to go camping or whatever that is, like this is how many hours of work it's going to take to do that. Or what are other ways we could earn that money. Like I feel like that's, money is so secretive, even in households, that nobody talks about it, nobody discusses it, nobody knows what's going on with it. And then we're expected magically as adults to be able to figure that out.

Suzy Alcantara  33:45

Yeah. And I think there's a deep seated fear about that, too. You know, like my parents probably didn't, well not even probably, they never wanted us to realize that that we were struggling. So even though he didn't have to say it verbally, I felt it. Like now in hindsight, you know, like, looking back at my life now. It's just like, wow, was the love language, always an act of service between family members, the way they serve the community? And then look where I am at today in my business, right? It's like all acts of service. But that's one of the things too is just being even a parent is like you don't want to ever bring that fear, I guess, in my mind, of not having enough. But it's very easy. Like even though the language around that might not even be verbalized, kids will always feel the struggle.

Dawn Taylor  34:44

Well, but I think, and tell me if I'm wrong, but like I know growing up, my sister and brother and I will have conversations now, and I'll be like, no, Mom and Dad were fine. They were, like, they figured it out. But my sister will be like, no, they were flat-ass broke, and mum could hardly feed us, which is why she bought like 50 pound bags of onions and we had like fried onions with every single meal. And I'm like, I just thought she wasn't a creative cook.

Suzy Alcantara  35:12

Yeah, it's a different perception, I guess.

Dawn Taylor  35:14

Perception is so different for every single kid. But also like, if we know that kids are feeling what's going on, and we aren't telling them the story of what's going on, like, we're not giving them the details. Are they not then just creating their own story around it?

Suzy Alcantara  35:34

Yeah, exactly. And then they're going to create their own story about--

Dawn Taylor  35:37

-- your parent. Totally, your parents may have never felt that they were actually struggling. They may have felt that they were thriving with what they had, and they were killing it. But on the outside, you watching felt the struggle so you then attached this meaning of struggle to what they were doing, which then plays into your adulthood of like, I can't work that much. I can't do those things. I can't ever have that. The house that then carries this weight of having to hustle that hard. Right? Do you see where like, all these beliefs just end up so intertwined? And I think that's where, like, we should be more honest about it. I was talking to - I know, I told you that I am like obsessed with going to concerts right now. The energy just calms me, right. I love the energy of it. So I'm like, if I can't live in downtown New York, I'm going to go to a lot of concerts to feel that intense energy of a big crowd of people. But I had texted a friend yesterday to see if she wanted to go to something with me. And we've had conversations about this. And she was like, honestly, she's like, done, everything's maxed right now. Financially, I'm struggling, like, I just can't. And I was like, thank you for being so honest about that. And showing up in that way, like, thank you for letting me know. Now how can I support you in that, which then allows me to not be like, 'Hey, let's go for lunch, hey, let's go for coffee', hey let's do all those things. Right. Another friend recently, they've struggled really hard over the last few years, and she's like, we're looking at bankruptcy. And we've been going to the food bank to feed our kids. And I'd invited her to go out for breakfast. And she was like, I just can't. And when she was honest and vulnerable with me, right, vulnerabilities are connections made. I was like, come over and let me feed you. Right, come to my home and let me love on you and feed you a home cooked meal. Like I would be honored to do that. Right? And I think that's where we need to open up, we need to talk to each other, because how many times have we gone out for the meal or done the thing that we can't afford, and we know we couldn't afford it, and we needed the money for something else. But we didn't want people to think we couldn't afford it or to think that we weren't successful. Right? And then we make really poor decisions sometimes. When if we were vulnerable about it, and we were just like, 'No, actually, I'm really struggling and I am like financially just not in a position to afford that right now.' It would be like, oh, let's go for a walk instead. Or let's do something else.

Dawn Taylor  35:49

It gives you more options. Yeah. 100%.

Dawn Taylor  38:20

It totally does. It totally gives us more options, but also to have conversations like we've had about, like, what does it look like to not own a home? What does it look like to do the work we do where we, like, our hearts are so involved, right? How do you charge for those things? Right? Like how to do those things. So for anyone listening, I think my biggest thing is if you have kids, talk to your kids, teach your kids, even if it's talking to them about like, hey, yeah, you know what we